


Wish I'd Stayed Inside My Mother

by onoheiwa



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Child!Fai, Child!Yuui, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Imprisonment, Injury, Insanity, Mild Blood, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, Valeria - Freeform, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 07:58:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9225767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onoheiwa/pseuds/onoheiwa
Summary: They are trapped where time does not flow. Maybe if one of them died the other could be free. But Yuui wants to live and he hates himself for it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Umm... so this started because I wanted to write something like "Older Than I Look" that focused more on the negative implications and impact of Yuui's age on his character and relationships. I wanted to start way back at the beginning during he and the original Fai's time trapped in Valeria because honestly, do any of us really know how long they were there?  
> Anyway, it morphed into something else, as is so often the case with me, and came out way darker than I was intending and into something that needed to be by itself, separate from anything else. 
> 
> This is not a fun piece. It was interesting to write and I hope it comes across as the dark, slightly off-kilter piece I was hoping for. Let me know how it feels. 
> 
> Also, title comes from the song "Smother" by Daughter because that song is Fai D. Fluorite precisely.

Colossal wardens loom with grins like teeth and gravestones and he, dragging body after body in diminutive fists to their feet, piles them as high as he can climb, and it is as arduous with the thousandth, as so with the first. It is as hard after three thousand, after five thousand, after ten thousand… long after he abandons time.  

He does not get any stronger.

Weak and frail and weaker still, body after body after body; his own just taller, his hair just longer, but slow, agonizingly slow. He grows, but barely and he does not get any stronger.

So many bodies.

A long breath and he sees his hands, his tiny, fragile hands. Raw and bloody fingers, stiff as those in death and ice; fragments of dust and stone and cloth nest in his flesh, gnawing at skin for food. It hurts. His fists clench and he glares at weak, tiny, broken hands and wants to scream. Fai is helpless, trapped in the sky, so it is  _his_ hands that must fabricate their salvation.

But he is not getting any stronger and rigor mortis has made friends with the air and he cannot break the wardens’ teeth. He is a babe with no compass and no scheme; he does not know what to do.

He gets another body.

~~~

He sits against the wardens’ feet, mind astray of the cold and uneven surface beneath him, staring up at a sky that never changes - an unbroken mass of grey cloud which threatens rain that never falls. It is rather much like himself.

He wonders how far time has marched ahead of he and Fai. Dry and bleeding lips twist to grimace for it may have been better if one had died rather than doom both to this void. He would never harm the other, but he thinks death a satisfying conclusion were it his twin’s desire; he would die even were it not. It would be better.

It would be better.

If only he could die.

He gets another body.

~~~

He wants to live and hates himself for it. He drags body after body to the wardens, claws at their immortal legs and strains toward freedom until every muscle screams for relief. The wardens’ legs are streaked with his blood, the dead beneath his feet seep with it; somehow, he never runs out of blood to bleed.

He is so tired.

Were death a guest their pain would end; Fai would not suffer any longer, he would not suffer any longer. The cold sheathes his bones and blood clothes his broken, torn, sore and weary limbs. If he just lied still he could rest. If he accepted his doom, he could rest. If he died, maybe they would set Fai free.

But he wants to live.

But he is more afraid of dying than he is of suffering.

But he can hear Fai’s voice and he remembers the taste of water and he wants to breathe the air at the wardens’ crowns.

There has to be a way out. He yearns for life and he loathes himself for it for they both live in suffering. But he would rather that than die alone, than leave Fai alone, than be apart for eternity. There must be a path and he will be its finder and they will be free.

He gets another body.

~~~

Fai sings, sometimes. The minor key sinks from the high tower, faint and quivering and more wound than balm. He trembles with the need to weep, to be beside his other half - to be _whole_. When apart, he wears selfishness, selflessness; he misremembers how Fai would feel. When apart he forgets what it is to be together and he is no longer himself.

And when they are apart, Fai sings unto crumbling and he loathes when the other cries.

They are not well apart... they are not well.

He looks at his hands and they blur beneath captive tears and he does not clench his fists because it hurts too much; sometimes he thinks he sees bone. He sees infancy, young and powerless and weak, unable even to stop the weeping.

“Fai,” he whispers, and liquid crystals scatter in the air. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” It becomes a mantra; a prayer, a promise, a plea; it is the only thing he knows how to say. “Fai, I’m sorry.” He cannot get them out, cannot be their savior; a helpless, weakened child with no fingers and no hope.

Somehow, he gets another body.

~~~

He is ancient - weary and empty and not at all wise. His bones ache and his heart aches and his throat has withered from endless murmurs of “Fai, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The pile of bodies is high but the wardens stand much higher still and the weight is still so heavy to bear. He has not gotten any stronger.

His feet trudge and he wrestles with body after body after body, scratching the walls with his bones and howling to the sky. He hears Fai weep, lose hope, take on silence. It has been years, it has been decades, it has been centuries, and change had an affair long ago. Endless, echoing, empty eternity. A black hole of stagnation, of repetition; sameness.

Everything is ageless.

He looks seven and feels seven hundred and he has not gotten any stronger; he looks a child but feels like death and he cannot decide if he wants to live or to die; his body is juvenile and his mind…

It is unravelling.

Too much quiet, too many bodies, too little change. He cannot hear Fai and he is alone with his mind and it whispers that all would be well if only the rain became dead. 

He prays for the death of Valeria’s souls - for more bodies to heap and to escape the cage. He craves the sight of twisted limbs and bloody faces falling from the sky, revels in augmenting the mountain, smiles with greed for the blood that stains the stone even a little higher.

He laughs hysterically in the stale, silent air because he thinks he is insane and the thought makes him laugh; he laughs loud and madness joins in.

He gets another body.

~~~

When the King falls and says Valeria is dead…

When the King’s insanity is a mirror to his soul…

When the King dies and steals their doorway to freedom…

When he learns his wish has come true Yuui screams, not because he is afraid, but because it is still not enough. The wardens still stand and his bones are still free and he cannot fly Fai away.

And there are no more bodies to pile.

~~~

~~~

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](onoheiwa.tumblr.com).


End file.
